I am not defending him. I am saying he got the only pick that truly matters right so that buys him a lot of rope.
I loved this cartoon about Columbus as a kid. There was this episode that stuck with me some 30+ years later. After he returned from his first Americas trip, somebody threw him a party. One of the attendees started saying what Columbus did was nothing special and anybody could have done it. Columbus took a raw egg and asked the guy to make it stay upright. The guy tries many times and could not do it. Columbus takes the egg and cracks it on the table thereby creating a platform to keep the egg upright.
The guy then says oh, that's easy, I could have done it too. Columbus' response was anybody can do anything once they are shown how.
Always stuck with me because it is something I see repeatedly everywhere. People love to minimize other people's accomplishments by saying that was easy, anybody could have done it. Hindsight is 20/20.